


The Birthday Present

by savagescribbles (timeandcelery)



Series: The Birthday Present [1]
Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Birthday Presents, Comedy, Established Relationship, Fluff, Future Fic, Multi, OT3, Polyamory, Vacation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-29
Updated: 2013-08-28
Packaged: 2017-12-06 20:25:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/739801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timeandcelery/pseuds/savagescribbles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“We’re kidnapping you, Sturmvoraus,” Gil informs him, slouching across three of the seats. “You have no hope of escape.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Agatha Has A Plan

**Author's Note:**

> Tarvek-centric fluff for [Moxana](http://moxana.tumblr.com)'s birthday.

Gil is at his table in the library, surrounded by the notes of some long-dead Heterodyne with a rather terrifying penchant for construct-building, when a pair of hands cover his eyes. “Hi, Agatha,” he says. 

She drops her hands away and kisses the top of his head, and then she peers over his shoulder at the book in his hands. “Egregious Heterodyne’s notes on the properties of the revivified brain?” 

She’s right, of course, and he shows her the cover. “Have you already read through the whole library? Even you can’t possibly have finished in a year.”

“Not _all_ of it,” she says, swatting him playfully on the side of the head. “Anyway, can you stop? I have a proposal.”

He catches her hand and taps the pipe fitting on her finger. “You already asked. I said yes.”

She swats him again. “A _different_ proposal. You know what next month is?”

He swivels his chair around and pulls her into his lap, and, laughing, she lets him. “...September?” 

She pokes his nose. “Yes. What else?”

He grins. “The beginning of autumn? The Festival of Bountiful Terror?”

“That’s in October.”

“Okay, I give up. What is it?”

“Tarvek’s birthday,” she says. When he buries his face in both hands, cringing, she pats him on the shoulder. “It’s all right. I won’t tell him you forgot.”

He pouts. When he’s finished, she very charitably doesn’t start laughing at him again, and he wraps his arms around her waist. “Was there a point to this?”

She gives him a flat look, which he breaks by ducking in to nuzzle at her neck. When she’s extricated herself, slightly pink in the face, she pushes his shoulders to arm’s length and raises an eyebrow. “I was thinking that we should do something nice for him.”

“Nicer than the--”

“In addition to it. All of us could use a break, anyway, and it’s not like the three of us have had much time together.”

“Sure we have.”

“Alone.”

“We--”

“ _Without the Castle._ ” He can’t argue with that. Not with the volume and frequency of the Castle’s thoughts on their activities. She grins. “What I was thinking was that he’s been talking about taking me to Paris since we started this.”

Gil thinks this over for a moment. “How are you going to get him to leave?”

“From the way he talks about it, it seems like it might be the one place he could spend a week without worrying about everything.”

“I don’t think he’s capable of that.”

She shrugs and flops forward to rest on his shoulder. “Well, worst comes to worst, we can always blindfold him and march him onto an airship.”

“Okay!”

\- - -

Tarvek notices their absences and whispered conversations and significant looks, of course. They are marvellously unsubtle, the both of them, but it’s endearing enough to humor them. 

He expects... something. For a while he is petrified that they’re getting the town, or worse, the Castle, involved, and that he’ll end up turning twenty-three surrounded by a mob of screaming Mechanicsburgers wielding fireworks and making lewd jokes about birthday presents.

He does not expect to be suddenly waylaid, one week before his birthday and en route to consult with the town haberdasher before what promises to be a very busy day, by Vanamonde von Mekkhan, but that is, in fact, exactly what happens. 

“Your afternoon appointments with Prince Gholst and the ambassadors from Prague are cancelled,” says Vanamonde, pressing a closed-top mug into his hands. “Have a coffee.” 

Tarvek stares at him and hands the coffee back. “What do you mean my appointments are cancelled?”

“Have a coffee,” says Vanamonde again. “I insist.”

“My appointments?”

“The Prince left for Beetleburg this morning, and the ambassadors never arrived. They’ve both rescheduled their appointments for the twenty-seventh.”

“That’s nearly two weeks from now!”

Vanamonde shrugs and sips his own coffee. "It seems it will have to wait."

“The political situation is sensitive! If it’s not addressed now, it’ll--”

“It’ll what?” asks Agatha over his shoulder.

“Aah!”

“Hello to you too,” she says, slipping her arm through his and handing back the coffee he’s just dropped. He’s suddenly thankful for the new and practically impervious lids that Vanamonde seems to hide in every pocket and up both his sleeves. "Thank you, Vanamonde, everything's just about ready."

By the time he’s done thinking about coffee, they’ve veered off down a side street. Agatha is still holding onto his arm, and Vanamonde has disappeared. “Er,” says Tarvek.

“Yes?”

“Where are we going?”

“Out.”

“...we’re already out. And my appointments are cancelled.”

“Yes, I know.” She pats his hand. “Prince Gholst is terribly dull anyway, and the ambassadors probably just want to make sure they’re still under the Storm King’s protection, since they seem to be incapable of being convinced of that. You’re not missing much, and right now, it’s as stable as it’s going to get. This isn’t last year. The continent’s not going to explode if you miss a few appointments.” She pulls a face and adds, “Or if I do.”

Tarvek is unconvinced, and Agatha shakes her head as they turn off again onto one of the main roads. He goes where she pulls him. “Agatha, why did you cancel my--”

“Hello, milady!” shouts a girl of about eight from the flower-shop, hanging over the railing in front. “Hello, Mister Prince!”

Tarvek gives a little bow. Agatha waves and calls out, “Hello, Elisaveta!” The girl, gone wide-eyed, squeaks and swings back into the shop to shriek excitedly to her mother that the Mistress knows her name. Agatha smiles and turns back to him, expectant. “...What were you saying, Tarvek?”

He sighs. “Just tell me where we’re going?”

She shakes her head firmly. “Surprise. But... I did cancel your appointments, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. We just needed to work this out.”

“We?" Tarvek narrows his eyes. "You’re _both_ in on this?”

“I’m afraid so.” 

They’re almost to the gates now, and Agatha lets go of him and dashes ahead to the door. “Everything on board?”

“Everything but you two!” It’s Gil, somewhere on the other side of the wall and clearly excited about something. Agatha beckons Tarvek forward before disappearing through the door herself.

When he steps through, he finds a small airship anchored just outside the walls. Gil nods to him as he helps Agatha into the gondola.

When she’s safely on board, Gil turns back to the door and offers his hand to Tarvek. “C’mon.”

He takes it and shortly finds himself in a small room fitted with plush-looking seats in Mechanicsburg blue and -- mercifully -- with thick drapes over all the windows. The steering berth is at the front, closed off by a wall and more curtains and occupied by an airman whom Tarvek is fairly sure he recognizes, and in the center of the room there’s an enormous stack of luggage. Their luggage. Which only confirms his suspicions.

“We’re kidnapping you, Sturmvoraus,” Gil informs him, slouching across three of the seats. “You have no hope of escape.”


	2. A Comedy of Errors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein our heroes discover that anonymity is hard to come by.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Airships! Picnics! Self-indulgent fluff! Doomed attempts at secrecy!
> 
> [Also: I'm sorry about the delay in progress. I'm trying to finish my bachelor's thesis right now and posting will be slow until it's done.]

“Is this --”

“Retrofitted Empire ship,” confirms Gil. “Fastest we could get.”

“Fastest?” asks Tarvek, narrowing his eyes at Gil a little. “How far are you two wretches taking me?”

Agatha looks up at him from where she’s sitting, half-sunk into one of the overstuffed seats, and shakes her head. “Secret.”

He sighs. “It’s Paris, isn’t it?”

Their secret is out, and Agatha laughs aloud. Gil, on the other hand, sounds sheepish when he speaks. “Are we really that obvious?”

He shrugs. “Logical conclusion, but... yes. Will you at least tell me how long we’ll be gone, or is that a secret too?”

“Not long,” says Gil, at the same time as Agatha answers, “Through the end of next week.”

“A week?” Tarvek echoes, his voice rising. “I can’t be gone for a week! The meetings I have are urgent and sensitive political matters!”

Gil and Agatha exchange a look. “Told you.”

“Shush, Gil,” says Agatha, giving Tarvek a sympathetic look. She’d been expecting this, too; being torn from his politics would throw Tarvek for a loop no matter what. Minions and ministers would be more than capable of handling their jobs for a week, but that wouldn’t keep him from worrying. As Gil gives the signal for take-off, though, she figures she may as well try the sensible tack. “Tarvek?”

He sighs and shoves a hand through his bangs. “Yes?”

“With whom are we currently at war?”

“No one.”

She nods and plants her hands on her hips. “And with whom are we likely to be at war within the next ten or so days?”

Tarvek thinks for a moment. “Well, there was that ‘Death to the Usurpers’ fellow out of Heidelva.”

“Wasn’t he the one whose army was three townsfolk and a mechanically-augmented sheep?” asks Gil. 

Tarvek reddens. “That is not the point! The point is that --”

“That we’ve all done a lot,” interrupts Agatha, “and that if the people working for you weren’t capable of handling it for a week, they wouldn’t be working for you at all, and that we are going to take a proper break and nobody is going to bother us. It’s a vacation, Tarvek. You’re not abdicating.”

Tarvek sits down abruptly as the gondola begins to move, and Agatha watches defeat settle on his face. “Okay, fair,” he concedes, and then after a moment, he brightens up. “Are we going to the opera?”

“We’ve got a box.”

He looks overjoyed at that, and Agatha fills him in on the rest of their plans as they fly west, worries of cancelled meetings alleviated for the moment. A few hours in, Gil produces a basket of food from the luggage pile, and they have a picnic on the gondola floor, with fruit tarts and sandwiches and gingerbread trilobites. There’s just enough of an excellent wine to leave all three of them giggly and sleepy, and they doze off leaning on each other, Tarvek’s head pillowed on Gil’s shoulder and Agatha’s on his chest.

She wakes up first, with her boys snoring on the floor and the gondola gone dark, and after she disentangles herself she makes her way over to pull back one of the drapes. Far below them there are gaslights leading into a the bright spreading glow of a city. Maybe it’s Paris. Maybe it isn’t. She wouldn’t know. She crosses quietly to the pilot’s berth and opens the door. “Norbert?”

“Milady! We’re almost there.”

So it was Paris. Thanking him, she goes to wake the layabouts, who stir and blink and shove each other getting up. 

They dock in one of the larger shipyards, and leaving Norbert the airman with ample money for lodgings and food, they are soon packing into a large black carriage from the dock station.

The driver is sorting through their luggage when he jolts upright, stares at them, and nearly drops one of the trunks on his foot. “Are you-- you’re--”

Well. 

Agatha had hoped that they would at least get to their hotel. 

So had her boys, judging by Gil’s sigh and the way Tarvek shoves his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Oh, here we go already,” groans Gil, and he clambers over Tarvek’s legs to jump out of the carriage. On the ground, he draws himself to his full height and glares down at the driver.

Gil is, in fact, rather gifted at looming, and as he lifts the trunk out of his hands, the driver quails. “I -- I see, sir.”

Gil nods, but he doesn’t stop looming. He drops his voice for effect, too “My companions and I,” he remarks, “would be most grateful if you kept this rather... discreet.”

Inside the carriage, Tarvek digs through his pockets and starts counting coins. “We can offer you an incentive,” he calls out. Next to him, Agatha sighs and slouches back against the seat. Their arrival is bound to be out before daybreak.

When Gil and the luggage are finally inside the carriage, they give the (now sufficiently cowed) driver directions. Their destination for the night is a hotel in the theatre district, elegant but off the main thoroughfares; afterward, they would be moving to a townhouse near the university, rented for the week from owners presently in the country. They have an opera box, tickets to the theatre, and reservations for several elegant restaurants, all booked under false names. 

It all looked very nice on paper when they came up with it, but now that they’re here, Agatha’s a bit wary about it after all. If they can’t even ward off a driver, how are they going to fare against the rest of the city?

“You’re worried,” says Gil, nudging her leg with his foot. Tarvek rolls his eyes at Gil, but he looks at her much longer with his own concern on his face.

“I am not,” says Agatha. “Not really, anyway.”

“If this is about the driver, we’ll be fine. Paris is huge -- we won’t run into the same people twice..” He sounds confident in his judgments. Tarvek gives him an incredulous look.

Oh, well. 

There’s nothing to do but wait, and so they do.

It’s nearly midnight when they finally make it to the hotel, and it’s even later when they finally end up inside thanks to Tarvek’s extended attempt to wheedle the driver into silence.

“Hello,” Agatha says to the first person in uniform she sees. “Three for Clay? We have the Prince’s Suite?”

“Lady Heterodyne!” exclaims the porter.

“Shhhhhhhh!”

The door opens, and a woman in the hotel’s uniform sticks her head out. “Did you just say -- _blue fire_!”

Gil buries his face in his hands.


	3. That Kissing Stuff

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Paris! Also kissing! Also newspapers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM SORRY FOR THE DELAY I WAS FINISHING MY BACHELOR'S THESIS. PLEASE ACCEPT THIS FLUFF.

They make it up to their suite with no more trouble than a few pairs of wide eyes and some whispers among the staff, and once inside they peel out of boots and hats and traveling coats and look around the rooms. 

The suite is furnished in dark woods and deep reds and dominated by a huge, canopied bedstead. Someone has tacked an “Absolutely NO Experiments On These Premises! (Unless You Ask First)” sign to the wardrobe doors.

As Tarvek opens a trunk to hang their opera clothes, Gil drops onto the bed and, catching her by the hand, pulls Agatha down with him. Taken by surprise, she yelps and giggles and kicks at his ankles, scuffling until she can roll to the side and tuck her head against his shoulder. At the noise Tarvek looks over his shoulder, and he can’t help but smile at the way they fall together, comforting and comforted.

It used to worry him, when they were first three and he still somehow feared that he would lose them: they had seemed to fall together with such ease, with a love so overwhelming that he’d wondered how he could possibly have a place in it. 

It hasn’t worried him for a while, especially not when they beckon him over.

Only rolling his eyes a little, he goes, and he’s a step away from the bed when Gil grabs his arm and drags him down. Tarvek lands heavily atop him, earning a groan, and then there are hands in between them and Agatha pushing them apart. She ends up over both of them, smiling, and then she rolls onto her stomach to drape an arm over each of their chests. 

“Hello,” says Tarvek, and she leans over to nuzzle his jaw.

“Do you like it so far?”

“Like what?”

She gestures widely and then drops her arm back onto his chest. “Your birthday present.”

Tarvek turns his head to bump her nose with his. “It’s the nicest gift anyone’s ever given me,” he says, and he cups her cheek and kisses her gently. When he breaks away, he gazes at her almost solemnly for a moment, all at once overwhelmed by the joy in her face and by how much it really does mean. “I mean that. Nobody’s ever done something this nice for me. Nobody but you two.” 

If he’s sappy, so be it, because it’s the truth. At any rate, Agatha doesn’t seem to mind: she gives a happy little hum and kisses him again.

“You two are _revolting_ ,” says Gil.

“Oh, you’re one to talk, Herr ‘wrote my name on all the bolts’!” she says, laughing and prodding him in the ribs. He makes a sound of mock distress, and she turns over to kiss him too. 

“Mph!” she says, as he tugs her down. 

“Revolting,” he says again, and he threads his fingers into her hair and brings her toward him into an eager kiss. 

Tarvek chuckles behind them, giving them both a push and propping himself up on one elbow as Gil trails kisses down Agatha’s jaw. He doesn’t get very far before she pulls away, though, and quirks an eyebrow down at him. 

When he opens his mouth to speak, she presses a finger to his lips, which he closes obediently. “Mmf?” he manages before she bends to whisper something in his ear, too low for Tarvek to hear it. She pulls away to regard him, seemingly waiting for an answer. “Ooh,” he says, a grin spreading across his face.

“Well, what do you think? Is the plan satisfactory?”

“I should think so.”

“What is it that you two are -- gh!” Tarvek breaks off, finding his question taken care of. Along with his shirt, and his ability to speak.

\- - - -

It’s already mid-morning when Tarvek wakes up. Careful not to disturb either of the others, he extricates himself from Gil’s death grip, maneuvers around Agatha’s blanket cocoon, and pads barefoot toward the door. Their breakfast is already waiting on the table there, and he tips up the lid to find pastries and fruits and some sort of egg dish in a smaller silver pan. Ignoring the food for now, he sits down and flips through the morning’s newspaper.

Paris hasn’t changed much since he left it, it seems -- the main reports are the same scuffles, scandals, and explosions that he’d seen firsthand before, and the paper is preoccupied with the sort of gossip that only really breeds there. 

He doesn’t realize what that means until it’s too late. 

When Agatha peers around the corner a few minutes later, tying back her hair, she finds him staring at it with a sort of horrified amusement on his face. She perches next to him on the couch and steals a croissant from the tray. “Is something wrong?” 

Tarvek lays out the paper in front of them, open to the first of the society pages, and gives her a moment to read it.

“‘Taken By Storm’?” she asks. “ _Seriously_?”

“We’re headline news,” he moans.


	4. Headline News

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Newspapers and ill-advised tourism.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW OKAY sorry, once again, for the delay. Life keeps happening.
> 
> I keep wondering if I'm writing these three too silly. And then I remember that the one time we've seen them lose their inhibitions in canon they started giggling and making harem jokes and hitting on each other, so.

They are, in fact, headline news. Multiple times over, too, which they discover when Agatha rings the desk for whatever other papers they have. Soon they have seven different papers and a pot of tea.

Agatha reads while Tarvek pours, and suddenly she snickers. “Hmm?”

" _Le Monde Mecanique_ ,” she says, trying very hard to stop laughing long enough to speak, “has dubbed us the _Mechanicsburg à trois_.” 

Tarvek blinks for a moment, and then he bursts out laughing too.

“Well,” he says after a while, “it could be less accurate.” Agatha giggles and finishes her croissant. They sit there quietly for a few minutes while Tarvek finishes his paper, not talking or touching. The silence is nice.

Soon Gil stumbles out of the bed and toward the window to peer past the blinds.

“Is there anyone out there?”

“No,” he says, letting the blinds fall. He rubs his eyes as he crosses toward them, and Agatha starts laughing again at his bad case of bedhead. She reaches up for him as he passes anyway and kisses him on the cheek. “Were you expecting someone?” he asks as he settles next to her.

Tarvek holds up _Le Monde Mecanique _, and Gil makes a noise of pain.__

“But -- but it’s Paris!” he protests after a moment. “This is ridiculous!”

“Yes, it is,” says Tarvek.

“There are hundreds of thousands of people here!”

“Two million, actually.”

Gil makes a face at him.

“Well, at least there aren’t any reporters outside?” Agatha suggests, reaching for another croissant.

“None that I saw,” grumbles Gil, and he helps himself frustratedly to some eggs.

\- - -

They finish eating soon and dress for the morning, even though none of them know where they’re going or if they will even be able to go. It’s early still, and they have hours to fill before dinner and the evening’s performance of Zephronia at the opera house.

Agatha sits on the bed to fasten her boots as Tarvek straightens out Gil’s waistcoat and does up three more buttons on his shirt. “Well,” she asks, “what did you like when you were here?”

“Well, there was this one place--”

“I know we’re close to this little--”

Tarvek waxes poetic about a tiny restaurant tucked behind one of the theatres and about a row of clothiers and tailors just nearby. Gil mentions a couple of bakeries and a district of dusty supply shops, staffed by the invariably grumpy and full of old tools and strange treasures and loose gears. (“What, no sleazy bars now that you’ve got us?” needles Tarvek, earning himself a push.) They both describe the same bookshop, a labyrinth beneath the streets of twisting shelves and endless volumes and the city’s most knowledgeable (and least friendly) owner. They decide, eventually, to go to the shops in the next few streets first and to see if Tarvek can find the clothing shop that he knows is in the area but the name and exact location of which he’s somehow managed to forget.

Gil mashes a newsboy’s cap down over his hair, which refuses to lay flat even after being attacked with water and a comb, and they head off down the stairs and into the street. It’s bustling with morning traffic, full of carriages and clanks and the occasional mechanically-altered horse.

They make it a few blocks without attracting any attention, and they start to relax. Agatha stares in curiosity at the buildings and shopfronts around her, and halfway down a third block she stops both the boys to look at a small wheeled clank that’s stalled outside of a patisserie. “Crude but effective,” she concedes. “If I was designing it, I would recouple the interior hydraulic routing and remove the condensers entirely, and if we were to rebuild the engine too with that system you designed, Tarvek, we could make it run three times as fast!”

The boys join in, throwing out ideas and modifications and pieces that they’re sure they have lying around in their labs back in Mechanicsburg, and Agatha notices that they’re starting to get curious looks. She picks up her pace and tries in vain to flatten down her hair.  “I think they’ve recognized us.”

Tarvek takes a quick look around, counting the stares, and nods. “Looks like it.”

“Of course,” Agatha grumbles.

“Sorry.”

“Not your fault. We should’ve expected something like this when we brought you here.” She pulls off her glasses and dusts them on the sleeve of her blouse. “We should’ve... I don’t know, disguised ourselves.”

“What, in capes or something?” asks Gil. He tries to tip down the brim of his hat anyway.

“I don’t know!” Agatha says, trying to keep her voice at a loud whisper and mostly failing. “I just want to walk without being stared at!”

“You’re right. We really should’ve expected this,” says Gil.

Agatha looks sidelong at him. “ ...Can’t you make yourself look shorter or something?”

“Hey!” He points at Tarvek. “He’s almost as tall as me! And he’s got weird hair!” Tarvek prods him in the back. “Ow!”

“ _Nice_ hair. And he’s not as...broad.”

“Oh, not as broad, is he?”

Agatha sticks out her tongue at him, and they all start laughing, which only draws more attention to them until they duck their heads and dash the next half of the block.

\- - -

They never find the shop.

They do, however, stumble into an old professor from Gil and Tarvek’s university days who insists on taking the three of them into a nearby coffee shop -- which, in turn, proves to be a sort of enclave of other professors from Gil and Tarvek’s university days. One of them makes the mistake of mentioning to Agatha that he had known her father in his Transylvania Polygnostic days.

Tarvek is pretty sure they're going to be there for hours.


	5. Opera Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "To the royal box, of course?"

They do manage to take their leave eventually, after the professor has exhausted quite a number of Heterodyne Boys stories which appear little more factual than the standard.

As they step back into the street, Agatha pulls her watch out of her pocket, flips open the lid, and shrieks.

“What’s wrong?”

She turns the watch face toward Tarvek, who winces. “So... dinner’s in an hour, the opera’s in three, we haven’t dressed, and we haven’t packed our things for the townhouse?” he asks.

She nods and then looks over at Gil, who’s scanning the crowded street and apparently ignoring them both. 

“Well, c’mon,” he says when she taps him on the shoulder, “let’s get a carriage back, then.”

They do get a carriage. One of the “experimental” ones, at Gil’s behest. And while they do arrive at the hotel in record time, Gil is grumbling about poor design, Agatha’s coat is ruined, and Tarvek has to be handed a mirror to convince him that his hair is not on fire.

\- - - 

“We are going to be late,” Tarvek says as they leave dinner, full of fine food and very short on time.

“We are not going to be late, Tarvek.”

“We are going to be late and they won’t let us in.”

“Tarvek, it’s two streets away.” Agatha lifts her skirts and strides ahead of both of them, chin in the air and opera cloak trailing along behind her.

Gil looks at Tarvek, shrugs, and follows her.

They are not late.

\- - -

When they reach the opera house, the doorman's eyes widen, but he merely inclines his head. "My lady." He bows. "My... lords. To the royal box, of course?”

"Don't say anything," implores Gil as they're led inside. Tarvek wants to elbow him in the ribs (and would, if they weren’t among the dignified). He steps on his toe instead, and Gil glares at him as they cross the threshold.

The opera house is vast and beautiful, and Tarvek can't resist gushing about the acoustic engineering as an usher leads them up the stairs to where their box sits, in view of the whole house. Agatha gasps and Gil raises his eyebrows when they step in; it’s lavish, draped in silk and velvet in scarlet and gold, and even Tarvek has never been here before. 

There are eyes on them again as they take their seats, but this time it’s less intrusive. They are meant to be seen, here, even if Gil doesn’t agree. 

They could have anything they wanted brought to them, but instead Gil steps out of the box, straightening his waistcoat, as the others sit down. 

Agatha looks toward him as he disappears and then she moves forward, close to the front of the box. Tarvek watches her watching the theater, leaning on the railing to take in the crowds and the stage and the elegance of the engineering, tilting back her head to follow the dome of the ceiling. 

He means to say something about how they’re meant to have clanks of an entirely new kind, as well as dancing automata (though they’ll never rival the Muses), but he can’t stop watching her. She glows red-golden in the soft light, book and glasses in one gloved hand, bright as flame.

He grins like a fool instead, grins until his face aches and Gil comes back with drinks and Agatha catches him staring and smiles back. 

Some tiny corner of his mind tries to remind him that he’s being watched, that they’re exposed to the public’s view entirely, but he can’t bring himself to care. 

Later the lights go down, and Agatha nestles against his shoulder as the first notes swell from the orchestra, and Gil wraps an arm around them both as the music grows.

\- - - 

When the curtain drops, Agatha and Tarvek are enchanted; Gil is, at least, impressed. (He does find their enraptured Spark-tinged babble about sets and clanks and costumes and arias to be, well, endearing. Not that he’d admit it, but Agatha can tell by the way he shakes his head at them.)

She grabs them both by the hand as they step from the box and leads them down the stairs, still talking at Tarvek about the music and the dancers dressed as clanks clearly inspired by the Muses. 

Then they’re accosted. 

It’s sudden, an empty hall becoming a throng in seconds. Their names are called out, their sleeves are grabbed at, cards are thrust into their hands.

Agatha is trying very hard to head off a reporter wielding a portable typewriter without being too Scary when, very abruptly, her feet leave the ground. She looks desperately around and finds Tarvek in a similar predicament. 

“Put me _down_ , Wulfenbach.”

“Not dealing with this,” says Gil under his breath, and then he barges through the crowd. “Not. Dealing with it.”

He puts them down heavily on their feet when they’ve reached the cloakroom, and by the time Agatha has her cape back he’s outside already, tracking down their carriage. 

Agatha stuffs a handful of visiting cards into Tarvek’s coat pocket as they hurry out into the warm autumn night to meet him.

\- - - 

It’s not much different when they reach the townhouse, although Gil doesn’t pick them up that time.

They barge through the crowds as a unit, refusing to stop no matter what absurdities are yelled at them. Tarvek catches Agatha mumbling, almost inaudibly, something about reinstalling all of their brains into pigeons if they don’t go away.

He chuckles and dodges a notebook, pressing closer to the door as she fumbles with the keys. Gil, on Agatha’s other side, catches his eye. He looks like he has half a mind to put someone’s eye out with his shoulder, but instead he’s put himself between Agatha and the crowds, shielding her from view or question. The near foot he has on her helps, and past the breadth of his shoulders little can be seen but the very top of the updo she’s piled her hair into. Tarvek moves to his right to close the gap just as she manages to unlock the door.

They spill into the vestibule all at once, and, turning on her heel, Agatha slams the door against the crowd with as much force as she can muster. The frame shakes, and, pushing her hair from her face, she grins delightedly. “Think they’ll leave us alone now?”

“No,” says Gil, glancing back at the curtains to be certain that they’re shut before stripping out of his coat and slinging it at the stand in the corner. “Not for a while.”

“At least the show was good.” Agatha moves to shrug out of her cloak before Tarvek stops her, undoing the golden clasp and slipping it from her shoulders. 

“It was spectacular,” he agrees. “The choice they made with the elephant clank and the trumpeters was bold, but it certainly paid off. As much as I do enjoy the Mechanikopera, it can hardly hold a candle to a company of this calib--” 

He breaks off because Gil has just wrapped both arms around his chest from behind, leaning his chin on his shoulder.

“What are you doing?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“Er. I mean. Why are you doing this now?”

“Wasn’t it dull enough that you dragged me to the opera in the first place?”

“Oh, shut up,” Tarvek tries to snap. The effect is rather ruined when Gil bites down on his earlobe and his voice tips into a startled squeak.

“Much better.” One of his hands drifts down, splaying over Tarvek’s waistcoat. “Agatha, care to assist me?” 

She looks between them with eyes like a lioness. “Gladly.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ALMOST DONE. Have most of last chapter written already. Also please note that I have never actually seen an opera, so if I've got the details wrong please correct me.


	6. The Birthday Present

They don’t leave the townhouse much for the next few days, and if they repurpose its kitchen as a lab… well, it can be replaced. 

The week is almost at its end when Tarvek’s birthday -- Friday -- arrives. 

It proves to be a very memorable morning. 

When they do -- reluctantly -- leave bed, breakfast is waiting for them, the table drowned under platters of eggs and sausages and pitchers of juice and an enormous pile of Tarvek’s favorite pastries. Gil is on his fifth fried egg of the morning when Agatha taps his shoulder. 

“Mmf?”

“It’s ten o’clock,” she says, and so it is. Whatever the cause, it must be why she’s been nearly vibrating with excitement since they came downstairs.

“Mff!”

She shakes her head and, putting down her own fork, turns to Tarvek. “We have another gift for you, actually! It’s meant to be here now.”

Tarvek, intrigued, follows her gaze toward the door. There’s nothing there, but Agatha is staring at it expectantly, as if it will suddenly spring open and -- 

There’s a rap on the door, and she jumps to her feet, dashing for the entryway. Tarvek looks over at Gil, who swallows his last bite of egg and gestures toward her.

By the time Tarvek has relocated his napkin and made his way over to Agatha, she’s directing two largeish men in an unfamiliar livery as they lift an enormous wooden crate over the steps and into the breakfast room. 

“Here, milady?”

“A little to your left?”

They put the crate down flat in front of the windows, moving it with as delicate a touch as they possibly can. The crate is stamped with “FRAGILE” in approximately eight different languages, and Agatha glares at them to reinforce the message.

When the deliverymen have hurried off, leaving Tarvek holding a crowbar over the remains of his breakfast, they all stare at the crate. 

“Go on!” says Agatha, and Gil moves toward the box too.

Tarvek kneels next to the crate, and Agatha moves to the other side, helping pull the lid away as he pries out the nails. When it is free of the box, all that any of them can see is a vast amount of shredded paper padding the contents. 

They move it away in great handfuls, and when it is cleared, they find something large wrapped in a cloth of scarlet silk.

Both Agatha and Gil pull away, looking expectantly at Tarvek; with trembling hands, he pulls back the cloth and gives a strangled cry.

“ _Artimo--_ "

He rocks backward on his heels, staring down at the Muse in the box. Eyes shut, cracked face serene, book lying on her chest, she is in pieces -- but she is there.

Tarvek presses a hand to his mouth, over his smile, and when he finally forces his eyes away from Artimo, they are brimming with tears. “How did you -- where did you -- _how_?” None of them can stop smiling, and Tarvek throws his arms around both their necks before they can answer. “How?” he repeats, lost, for once, for other words.

“Went through my father’s records on art-related disturbances,” Gil admits, sounding a bit pleased with himself. “Some crackpot old Spark in Italy that nobody else had ever heard of apparently caused a mass panic using art history and had ties to the local princess, so I thought, maybe...”

He looks unreasonably proud of himself, and even more so when Tarvek knocks him backward in a hug.

“Agatha helped,” Gil adds from the floor when Tarvek has let go of him. He sits up and stares into the box, looking down at the shattered lines of the clank. “She scared him into giving her up without even leaving Mechanicsburg.”

“I did not scare him!”

Gil gives her a flat look.

“Okay, not very much.” Tarvek, still speechless, does laugh at that, and then Agatha slips her hand into his. “We had no idea what shape she’d be in, but… we found her."

He stares at them both. "Thank you," he finally manages, and Agatha squeezes his hand.

"Happy birthday, love.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW THANK YOU FOR BEARING WITH ME I AM SORRY THIS TOOK ME SO LONG. This is why I do not write multi-part fics, even self-indulgent fluffy ones.
> 
> General notes:  
> \- Artimo is the name of one of the Muses mentioned in the second novelization (Clockwork Princess) -- I chose her pretty much at random, oops, but she seems to be [the one with the book](http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20080317091253/girlgenius/images/2/23/Muses-mural.png) from the mural.  
> \- I chose Tarvek's birthday on astrological grounds. If we ever get a canonical birthday I'll come back and rearrange the dates/season references.  
> \- There may yet be an addition to this fic -- I wanted to keep it PG-13, but the end of ch. 5 in the draft slid accidentally smutward. If I ever finish it, you'll be the first to know.


End file.
